Thousands of voting problem reports fielded across country

Election Day glitches

November 7, 2012

Leslie Fabian concentrates as she votes electronically Tuesday at the Su Nueva Laundromat in Chicago's 13th Ward. Voters made choices in the presidential race, and for Congress, state and local offices. / Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

By Brad Heath

USA TODAY

Millions of Americans turned out to vote in Tuesday's razor-thin presidential election, facing long lines, strict new identification requirements and, in some areas, polling stations without power.

Voters in key states such as Florida and Virginia waited in long lines hours after polls closed Tuesday night to cast ballots, even as politicians and their supporters urged them not to give up despite the long delays.

Candidates turned to social media to encourage voters through the long wait. "#StayInLine #StayInLine #StayInLine" Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin tweeted. The three states allow voters who were in line when polls closed to cast ballots.

One Florida elections office mistakenly told voters in robocalls that the election was today.

The Election Protection coalition of civil rights and voting access groups said they had gotten more than 80,000 complaints and questions on a toll-free voter protection hotline.

Many of the problems were tied to new state voting restrictions and fallout from the storm that devastated parts of the Northeast last week.

Elsewhere, the Election Protection coalition reported problems with ballot scanners in the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo; late-opening polling places in minority neighborhoods in Galveston, Texas; and some precincts in the Tampa area where voters were redirected to another polling place where they must cast a provisional ballot.

Voters reported Pennsylvania poll workers who improperly turned people away if they couldn't produce a photo ID. In one Pennsylvania precinct, a voter posted a YouTube video of a malfunctioning voting machine that put a check next to Mitt Romney's name when he tried to cast a ballot for President Barack Obama.

"The calls have been hot and heavy all day long," said Barbara Arnwine, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which monitors voting problems.

In Pennsylvania, civil rights groups complained that workers at some polling sites were requiring voters to show identification, even though a federal judge decided last month that the state's new voter-ID law could not be enforced this year. That led to some voters being turned away, Arnwine said.

"It is absolutely unconscionable, and people ought to be ashamed," she said.

Matthew Keeler, a spokesman for Pennsylvania's election office, said officials had heard of only a "few scattered reports" of people being asked for identification when they should not have been, and that state officials had contacted election workers in counties where that happened. He said that even when the voter ID law takes effect, people without identification will be able to cast provisional ballots, and should not be told they cannot vote.

In Pennsylvania, Republican officials said that Democratic poll watchers in Philadelphia had improperly prevented the party's poll watchers from entering voting sites. A court quickly ruled that Democrats could not shut them out.

In Ohio, a federal judge rejected a challenge Tuesday to the use of electronic voting machines. Another federal judge scheduled a hearing for this morning in a lawsuit challenging the way Ohio counts provisional ballots.

"Long lines, machine breakdowns, fights at the polls. Unfortunately, this is the new normal for Election Day," Rick Hasen, a University of California-Irvine election-law expert, tweeted.

Elsewhere, the biggest issues were long lines, new equipment and the kinds of routine mix-ups that surface in almost every election.

In suburban Alexandria, Va., a line of shivering, chattering voters snaked halfway down the block as people waited to cast paper ballots in a city recreation center at 7:30 a.m. It was the first time Virginians were required to show identification before voting, but election officials said no one had been turned away, and the line was not unusual for a presidential election.

In Newtown, Conn. -- parts of which are still without electricity after being struck last week by superstorm Sandy -- voters walked past knocked-over trees to cast their ballots at an elementary school. In Byers, Colo., a small farming town of about 1,160, the wait to vote at the American Legion Post 160 was 45 minutes to an hour as officials struggled with new electronic ballots.

In Florida's Pinellas County, around St. Petersburg, election officials mistakenly told voters that they would have until 7 p.m. today to cast their ballots. The polls actually close Tuesday evening. The county's election office told the Tampa Bay Times it stopped the calls as soon as it discovered the problem.

Voting -- and voting problems -- started well before Election Day, as states offered more opportunities for people to vote early. In Ohio, nearly 1.8 million people already had voted, either in person or by absentee ballot. In Florida, more than 4.4 million people voted early. Election observers expect that early votes could account for more than a third of all votes cast this year, the most ever.

Among the issues:

• Early voting delays: Voters overwhelmed polling locations in south Florida during the weekend. Some voters complained they waited in line for hours before finally being able to cast a ballot. The Florida Democratic Party went to federal court Sunday to try to force officials to extend early voting hours to cope with the problems. Voters also confronted long early-voting lines in Washington, D.C.

• Voter ID laws: For the first time, voters in Virginia, Wisconsin and several other states were required to show identification at the polls. Those identification laws, which supporters said were aimed at preventing fraud, drew widespread criticism from voting rights advocates, who said they could prevent tens of thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots.

• Provisional ballot uncertainty: Ohio's Republican Secretary of State has instructed election officials not to count provisional ballots if voters don't completely fill in their identification information. Those ballots could prove crucial in determining who wins Ohio's 18 electoral votes. A federal judge has said he will decide on a challenge to those restrictions before provisional ballots must be counted Nov. 17.

• Voting machine errors: The Republican National Committee asked election officials in six states to recalibrate electronic voting machines after reports that voters who tried to cast ballots for Romney found that their votes instead went to Obama. State officials generally said they did not see problems with the machines.

Both parties have assembled armies of volunteer lawyers ready to rush to court to challenge Election Day problems. A USA TODAY analysis last month found that the Republican National Committee had stashed away $5.2 million in a special recount fund; Democrats had $807,400 in a bank account for post-election legal challenges.